Tag: vivegam

A masala film is often misconstrued as a product that has something for everyone. Which is to put in a bit of action, comedy,romance and sentiment into the mix and hope for fans of these separate ingredients to savour their allotted time.

The mass masala film is the one that has the mass hero as the main ingredient and aforementioned masala components in varying quantities based on what the fans of the mass hero want and what the mass hero can actually do.

Enough of recipe type definition, boys! For the masala to work it must be cooked well and harmonize (oh how I’ve been wanting to use this word) so as to not to seem as separate elements. Yes, including our hero too.

I turned on my telly to watch Siva’s Viswasam; knowing fully what history I had with Vivegam, I did not harbour a lot of expectations but what I did have, was some Veeram to sit tight for the next adventure that Siva will take Ajith (and me) along.

This is the their best adventure yet!

Siva does very little to raise my hopes immediately, a series of drone shots establish the village setting; the hero opening or the “change-scattering” shot as it is known did not create any impact.

Yes yes, we know hero is the biggest mass in his village and everyone fears him etc. Maybe this was a job for our FRS writers after all, but wait.

Behind the thick white beard is Thooku Durai’s(Ajith Kumar) majestic smile, but even further behind the smile is a sad secret. While he goes about in slow motion solving the day to day of his near and dear, only a few know of his colourful (literal) past.

Good all this fine, get on with it! Yes yes if hero is serious in present he must have been a playful fellow in his past; this is unwritten rule.

Thankfully this flashback and bits of hero pandering that comes with it is over quicker than expected and now all we have with us is dour Thooku Durai.

We join him on a trip to Mumbai and how the movie changes gears!

<We would like to add that this is one of the very few Tamil films featuring Mumbai that does not have any underworld don connection to it. Kudos.>

Vivegam ended up with a lot of unintended humor because of spinning a story for a mass hero outside of his milieu (yes! I used milieu!) but then how else to make an international spy thriller?

This is an eternal question, how to integrate the best of the formulas of the west and the east? It’s a question that Kamal would have asked during the making of Vikram (1986).

In Viswasam, Siva seems to have understood Vivegam’s problems and tried to keep the best of both. A sequence driven action extravaganza spearheaded by a veshti wearing valorous man.

An action set-piece around a merry go round-a horror movie invocation in the form of a bathroom fight-a cage fight-multiple chases and what not; Thooku Durai tackles them all.

Tackles them all, but not in an overpowering mass hero way. In fact the stakes keep rising with every scene for Thooku Durai, making it difficult for him to succeed.

His wife hates him. His child, Swetha doesn’t know who he is. He promises not to reveal his identity because of honour. Gets run down by a car and almost faces death and also has to keep a promise. Phew! All these have consequences in the movie.

Totally impressed as to how challenging the writing makes the movie actually worthy of a mass hero.

Not to forget, other characters are treated with respect and given something to work with and not just sing the praises of lord mass hero, the ‘villain’ and his motivations too are not paper thin.

The writing does not belittle anyone to make the hero look taller or smarter than the rest.

I’m not saying that the songs are not a problem. I’m not saying that all the comedy really works; no I won’t tell such things because I’m pretty surprised by the rest of the movie to look and comment at all of this.

I’m just saying that most of the masala mixed well!

Viswasam is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video and running in select theatres.

As the Swivel Chair Spins is a column about watching movies from home, yes that simple.

-100: To us, we haven’t changed this boring intro, even with 14 writers on our payroll the fact that we can’t write a decent opening, shows the levels at which incompetence has seeped into the Laureate.<SHAME>

+5: Movie has no narration, a virtue especially when the last film we saw was Taramani.

+30: Two eastern European uncles have been cast in such a way that just by looking at them you will know that they are villains, one has cigar also

-51.25: When confronted by assassin, victims will state their name, age occupation, designation and aadhar number(liberals no need to provide) so as to make life easier for the assassin.

Assassin is of course our AK

+21: hero’s name is AK!! hero’s character name is also AK!! how cool is that, i mean how inventive #AK25.

+101: How the movies have changed, like actors used to ‘play’ characters like villain, spy, doctor, minister etc; but in Vivegam it is what critics will call ‘turning-genre-by-the-head’

Wait buddies, we will explain.

Like Vivegam is not a story about a spy, it is about Ajith Kumar (AK) if he had chosen to become a spy instead of an actor. Yes that is the story.
+34: Writer-Director has embarked on toughest task of making every dialogue that AK speaks as punch dialogue.

Even when AK asks for sugar it is so menacing that you will not let children go near AK. More about children later
-54: Story? LOL what story?

-129.07: Messaging: Like this is not a movie this is AK’s personal videos to his fans,

+21: Serbians are not going to like this film

+50: AK’s super power is that no bullet will hit him unless he wills it himself, much like Mahabharatam Bheeshmar.

+112.33: When facing an entire army, always look at the camera and speak with optimism in tamil, this itself will confuse them. (AK’s escapism rule)

-34.5: As expected, dutiful AK will have cute family life

-11: GVM school of non-ordinary heroine naming, here it is Yazhnini, and of course she is a carnatic music teacher in inteeerior Serbia.

Hi to Cleveland Thyagaraj+ Death Metal Thangaraj

Oh wait, they also run cute tamil organic food restaurant which is popular among the locals. <Yeppa Dei Nativity>

-379: However cute, children must not be allowed in cooking area, safety reasons.

Pokkiri Pongal and all ok, have you seen Serbian Pongal? #Internaaational

+17: Yazhini is so the dutiful wife that even Valluvar’s Vasuki will have to take morning tuition from her.

-600: AK-Yaazhini level ideal couple pressures will seep into real life for couples after seeing the film.

Not ruling out divorce based on this pressure.

-89.12: Anti-Terror Squad head-office looks like one IT company with reception and all, I think they might have pre-sales division also, if free please put out JD at naukri boys!

+109: As expected head of Anti-Terror Squad is played by one person who will believe whatever people will say

+45: Hobbies: apart from being a top class spy, killer, assassin, strategist, husband, organic food chain owner AK is also a New York Times best-selling author

-300: War as photo-op: no seriously if you are army uncle in Serbia you will have lot of time to stand on tanks, do circumambulation to fighter jet, go to picnic, take and remove sun-glasses.

Yes, in slow motion.

-6.7K: Everyone talks about AK, every single character will talk about AK in the film, AK also talks about AK.

+23: Director believes hackers can do anything in life. ANYTHING

-56: If you are low ranking/new recruit in the espionage business you will be treated as a comedy piece (Arumaiprakagasam)

+902: Main Job of main villain is not to break the world into pieces but to praise AK, second job of main villain is to take over the world.

+15: Dei, in this movie everything is one hologram, even things you can do in simple PPT these villains will show in hologram.

Yeppa sci-tech-death

+15: Level of data analytics is MAX. eg: villain will shout: find the total number of running trains in Serbia, in that how many people are watching hot star in that how many people are eating lays chips type questions and his data team will give the answer within seconds.

Add to this, you will see 456 types of tracking and hacking #scitechdeath

We asked our data analytics team in Pune a simple question, how many people visit our blog nu. Still these fellows are giving reports.

-433: For our data analytics team

AK does data analytics in his mind only, so he does not need team.

+9: Phoenix paravai!

-213: Mind numbing mind games AK and villain will play for three hours, at this point we shouted “VARENNNN MAAAA!” into our phones and recorded the same for future use

Also all fights become tiring because anyhow you know that AK is phoenix paravai and nothing will happen to him.

-0.98: Analysts are telling that running time of the movie increased…..because….of….the….way…..AK…………spoke………………the……….dialogues……..given to…….him…..

-75: Spy uncles think that shutting down satellites is like switching off fan while leaving classroom

+101: Carnatic-mixed-martial arts based climax fight. One of its kind in Indian cinema.

AK’s T shirt rule: quality of t shirt will deteriorate towards the end of the movie so that it can be torn to reveal torso